Teacup ballet

Olive Cotton’s most celebrated image, Teacup ballet, was constructed in a photographic studio after the day’s commercial work had been completed. At the time Cotton was an assistant to photographer Max Dupain and at the beginning of her career as a commercial and artistic photographer. Cotton had purchased a set of teacups and saucers from Woolworths for the studio and, intrigued by the angular handles of the teacups, noted their similarity to the ‘arms akimbo’ of ballet dancers with their hands on hips. Cotton arranged the teacups under a spotlight to accentuate their limb-like qualities, the result being a strong modernist composition.

The contrast of light and shadow became an important stylistic device for Cotton, one particularly evident in her later photographs of people and the natural world, including flowers, plants and trees. Teacup ballet was exhibited in the London Salon of Photography in 1935, Cotton’s first inclusion in an international exhibition.

Alice Clanachan, Assistant Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs